_ 0 # THR.ee CHeeH.S FOR. THE BLUe, WHITe, AND R.eD p R o O F all the AmerIcans whose eyes grow bright and whose pulses quicken at the sight of the Stars and Stripes and the sound of "The Star- Spangled Banner," none reacts to either patriotic stimulus more briskly than a retired advertising man named Gridley Adams, a chipper, outspoken, egocen- tric, and contentious old gentleman who for the better part of the last thirty years has carried on an impassioned, public love affair with the flag of the United States of America Adams, who will be eighty-five next month, has been chairman of the National Flag Code Committee since 1924, and In 1946 founded the United States Flag F ounda- tion, of which he is director-general, as well as sole active and supporting member Both are conspicuously one- man organizations whose present head- quarters are a four-room apartment Adams and his eighty-year-old wife, whom he married in 1898, OCCUpy in Peter Cooper Village. Adams believes firmly and unshakably that he IS the best-informed person around on the correct handling of and proper atti- tude toward The Flag. (To his mind, these last two words should always be capitalized when they appear in se- quence.) Some of the proprieties he ad- vocates are so finical, and so remote from common usage, that in the course of proclaiming his ardor for the flag he occasionally gives the impression that he not only regards it as his truest love but also regards hImself as its only true lover. Although he has found himself at frequent and disputatIous odds with other flag authorities, his own appraisal of his eminence in this field has been endorsed by such sentinels of the flag as the editors of the American Le gzon Magazzne, who stated in their columns ten years ago, "Gridley Adams knows more about displaying the United States Flag than any other living person." As far back as 1929, Adams was character- ized by the New York Evening Post as the Watchdog of the Flag, and more re- cently he has been hailed by Town G Village, a community weekly put out for residents of Peter Cooper and Stuyvesant Town, as Mr. Flag. Nearly all Americans stand up, most of them at some approximatIon of atten- tion, when they are in the vicinity of a band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Some of them may possibly know some of the words. Adams, a slight, white-haired, white-mustached F I 5 L E man who holds himself unusually straight even when he IS at ease and who knows all the words of aU the verses, draws himself rigidly upright whenever he hears the national anthem from any source, including the loudspeaker of a household radio. It is of no concern to him that the National Americanism Commission of the American Legion holds such private gestures of respect to be supererogatory. DIscussing the matter with Adams one day, an acquaintance of his remarked that he would feel silly ris- ing to his feet every time "The Star- Spangled Banner" was wafted Into a room where he was sitting alone. "Imagine demonstrating your patrIotism only when company is present!" snorted Adams. He advised the man to place a small flag on top of his radio, as an added inducement to exertion whenever the hallowed notes emerged. Adams is aware that his viewpoint is unconven- tional. "I guess I'm a crank," he said cheerfully a while ago. "I guess I'm just a crazy nut about the flag." Many Americans believe that it doesn't much matter how casually they treat their flag, provided they don't treat it with willful disrespect. The late Colo- nel James A. Moss, the founder and president-general of the United States Flag Association-a now defunct or- ganization-once stated that a sensible polIcy for any American was to handle the flag as he would his mother's picture. "You wouldn't leave your mother's pic- ture on the hood or back of a car, or soil it, or put it on the floor, or leave it out all night in the rain," he said. Adams, an old-fashioned type who uses a straight razor and wears spats, is a strong be- liever in respectfulness (he once threat- ened to cane a stranger for edging a lady out of a seat on a streetcar), but when it comes to complying with the federal and state statutes that relate to the flag, he is inclined to place the letter of the law above the spirit of it. As he roams observantly about New York or pores over newspaper and magazine illustrations, he is continually saddened and enraged to find evidences of indif- ference to or maltreatment, witting or unwitting, of the flag. He is at once moved to write indignant and admoni- tory letters to the parties he considers culpable. He does not give a hoot who the parties may be. One of his biggest and most comprehensive barrages was fired in 1938. It IS wrong for the flag to be allowed to touch the ground or to be 29 "'" "" "'" .. " '- . I .. *..,,*... fr _ . ..*****----.... **.11... - : :::: -- ...u. - - - -- If Gridley A dams used decoratively, and specifically wrong for it to be draped over a monument that is to be unveiled (although it is right for it to be draped over a casket in a military funeral). In 1938, a mon- ument so veIled was dedicated at Get- tysburg in honor of the soldiers of both the UnIon and the Confederate Armies. Among those who participated in the ceremonies were President Roose- velt and representatives of the Ameri- can Legion, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Sons of the American Revolution. Adams cut out a newspaper photograph of the scene, embellished it with an acid caption of his own, had the composite photostatted, and sent copies to several hundred peo- ple on his mailing list, as an example of a real horror. "What a shame that what foreign nations have never suc- ceeded in doing-bringing Old Glory to earth-it remained for a group of patriotic (???) Americans to accom- plish!" he wrote. "Patriotism-what crImes are committed in your name!" Adams has written a good many ex- hortatory tracts on Old Glory. "The Flag is not just a piece of bright mate- rial," he declared in one. "It is the Sym- bol of a great Nation. It deserves to be displayed correctly, reverently. . . . The National Flag represents the living country and is itself considered a living thing . . . every star a tongue, every stripe articulate." Now and then, appar- ently feeling that the flag and its appur- tenances, however vocal, are nonethe- less illiterate, Adams undertakes to serve as their amanuensis. He once wrote the owners of a Manhattan office building a letter sIgned "Your two naked flag- staffs" I t began, "We are a couple of stouthearted staffs. .." The signa- tories went on to complain that all the